Would you like to improve your relationship with your horse? Understanding a bit about how horses respond to human interaction and different training methods can improve our relationships with them and strengthen the likelihood that they’ll perform behaviors that we’ve requested of them. It’s possible, too, that if we smile while we’re working with them, they’ll respond even more favorably.
If that sounds far-fetched, we’ll back it up with a study that indicates that horses can indeed recognize human facial expressions and that they prefer a smile to a scowl. First, though, we’ll look at negative reinforcement and positive reinforcement training methods, and how you can use both in formulating the best course for your horse’s training.
Negative Reinforcement
Negative reinforcement is a training method that can help teach a horse (or other type of animal or even a human) specific behaviors. It’s traditional and widespread in the horse world. With the use of the word “negative,” this method of training can conjure up misleading
